Twitter shareholders approve $44 billion merger Musk is trying to exit

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Twitter shareholders voted to approve Elon Musk's purchase of the company, weeks ahead of a trial over Musk's attempt to walk away from the merger deal. Although a specific vote tally was not available today, multiple reports said investors backed Twitter's board recommendation to approve the $44 billion deal Musk had. accepted in April before changing his mind.

"A majority of Twitter shareholders voted to accept Musk's $54.20 per share bid to acquire the social networking company, according to a preliminary vote tally read Tuesday," wrote Bloomberg.

Today's shareholder vote was the last approval Twitter needed for the deal with Musk, but the bigger question is what will happen in the upcoming trial at the Delaware Court of Chancery. Twitter sued Musk to force him into the deal, and a trial is set to begin Oct. 17.

Musk owns approximately 9.2% of Twitter shares and was not expected to vote “given that he alleged Twitter breached the merger agreement,” the Wall Street Journal wrote. "The deal requires Mr. Musk to vote his actions in favor of the deal, although his support is not crucial if enough other investors support him."

Twitter stock rose 0.7% today despite a sharp drop in the overall market. Twitter was at $41.70 at the close, and shareholders would receive $54.20 per share should Musk complete the purchase.

Today's "shareholder meeting lasted 7 minutes, with open polls for about 3 minutes," the Bloomberg article said. "Shareholders could also submit votes several weeks before the meeting." News reports prior to today's meeting indicated that there were already enough votes to approve the merger.

The judge criticized Musk before the trial

Musk attempted to exit the merger claiming that Twitter lied about the number of spambots on its service. Musk repeatedly complained about the total number of bots on Twitter, but did not refute Twitter's specific estimate that less than 5% of its monetizable daily active users (mDAUs) are spam or spam. wrong.

Musk lost some key decisions in the pre-trial phase. His attempt to delay the trial until February 2023 was rejected in July. Last week, Judge Kathaleen McCormick denied Musk's new request for a four-week delay, writing in her ruling that "even a four-week delay would risk further harm to Twitter, too great to be justified." p>

McCormick also slammed Musk last week for not providing documents requested by Twitter, writing that "Musk's own production of text messages revealed glaring flaws." She ordered Musk to produce more documents, noting that Twitter "carried most of the burden of discovery" while "defendants had less to do but still hadn't met their obligations." /p>

A Twitter filing made public yesterday states that the shortcomings in Musk's texting production "are notable because they correspond precisely to the period when Musk apparently developed buyer's remorse and enacted his plan to escape the merger agreement".

More Musk texts made public

It is clear that the production of Musk's document "was incomplete as other parties produced messages to and from Musk during this time that Musk should have produced," Twitter wrote. This includes texts between Musk and Morgan Stanley's head of global technology i...